Day / September 30, 2018

Today is the birthday of American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). Wallace won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955 even though he never worked as a full-time poet. His day job was as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut.

One of Stevens’ best-known poems is “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” published in 1917. The poem captures the essence of poetry, a form of writing that challenges both the writer and the reader to “look” at the world from different perspectives and to see it in new ways. In the tradition of Imagism, a poetic movement that emphasizes precise imagery and clear, concrete diction, Stevens presents thirteen numbered stanzas, each featuring a different way of seeing the ordinary blackbird (1).

Today’s Challenge: Ways of Looking – the Seven “Sees”

What are ways you can see the world in a new way and from different perspectives even on an ordinary day in an ordinary place? Writing itself, in its various forms, is an excellent way of looking at the world from different perspectives. The different modes of writing described below mirror the various ways our brain organizes and processes information. Select one topic — a person, place, object, or idea to examine; then, explore that one idea in at least 7 of the 13 ways listed below:

On this day in 1901, Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim was published. The novel is an adventure story set in 19th century India, a time of British colonial rule. The adventure in the book, however, pales when compared to the adventure surrounding what happened when a soldier in the French Foreign Legion acquired a French edition of the novel.

The soldier’s name was Maurice Hamonneau, and his decision to take Kipling’s book into combat during World War I saved his life. Shot in battle near Verdun, Hamonneu lay unconscious for hours. When he regained consciousness, he realized that the book which he was carrying in his breast pocket had shielded him from the bullet. Piercing the book, the bullet left a hole that stopped 330 pages into the book, leaving only 20 intact pages between the bullet and Hamonneu’s heart.

In gratitude, Hamonneu sent the bullet-pierced book to Kipling along with the medal he had been awarded in the battle. Kipling was moved by the gesture, but later when he learned that Hamonneu had become a father, he returned the book and the medal with a note to Hamonneu’s son, advising him to always carry a book of at least 350 pages in his breast pocket.

Today the book and Hamonneu’s medal are preserved in the rare book section of the United States Library of Congress (1).

Today’s Challenge: Books Not Bullets

What one book is so good that it’s worth taking into battle — a book that everyone should read as if his or her life depended on it? What makes the book so special, so inspirational? Explain your choice, and assume you are writing to an audience who has not read the book. (Common Core Writing 2 – Expository)

On this last day of September, we focus on not forgetting one of the more famous mnemonic rhymes in English:

Thirty days hath September,

April, June, and November.

All the rest have 31,

Except for February all alone,

It has 28 each year,

but 29 each leap year.

This verse is attributed to Mother Goose, but it’s only one of many versions of the poem. One website, for example, lists an astonishing 90 variations of what has come to be called The Month Poem (1).

Mnemonic rhymes are just one type of mnemonic device. No, you can’t buy them in stores. A mnemonic device is a method of remembering something that is difficult to remember by remembering something that is easy to remember.

The word mnemonic is an eponym (See May 28 – Eponym Day), originating from the Greek goddess of memory and mother of the Muses, Mnemosyne.

To make things easy to remember, mnemonic devices employ different methods, such as rhyme, acrostics, or acronyms. Another method is the nonsense sentence made up from the initial letters of what it is you are trying to remember. Here’s an example of a sentence that is crafted to help us remember Roman numerals:

In Various Xmas Legends Christ Delivers Miracles.

Notice how the letters that begin each word correspond, in order, to Roman numerals:

I=1, V=5, X=10, L=50, C=100, D=500, M=1,000

You might also us an acronym. For example, CREED is a mnemonic device that helps us remember the essential elements of an argument:

C = Claim

R = Reasoning

E = Evidence

E = Explanation

D = Documentation

Another acronym ASK PEW is a mnemonic for remembering the essential elements of the rhetorical situation:

Audience, Subject, Kairos, Point/Purpose, Exigence, and Writer

Generations of school children have used the rhyme from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” (1861) to remember the start date of the American Revolution:

Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

Today’s Challenge: Remember, Remember the Mnemonics of September

What are some examples of important information that needs to be committed to memory? Think of something you need to remember, or something that everyone should remember, and create your own original mnemonic device. Use rhyme, acrostics, acronyms, and/or nonsense sentences to package your device in a handy, easy-to-remember format. (Common Core Writing 2 – Expository)

1 – Leap Year Day.com. Days of the Month Poem. 1904 Public Domain. http://leapyearday.com/content/days-month-poem.